Willie Watson

Willie Watson
Personnel
Surname	William "Willie" Watson
birthday	March 7, 1920
place of birth	Bolton upon Dearne ,  England
date of death	April 23, 2004
Place of death	Johannesburg ,  South Africa
position	External rotor (right)
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
1938-1939	Huddersfield Town	11 0(0)
1946-1954	Sunderland AFC	211 (15)
1954-1956	Halifax Town	33 0(1)
National team
Years	selection	Games (goals)
1949-1950	England	4 0(0)
1950	England B	3 0(0)
Stations as a trainer
Years	station
1954-1956	Halifax Town
1964-1966	Halifax Town
1966-1968	Bradford City
1 Only league games are given.

William "Willie" Watson (born March 7, 1920 in Bolton upon Dearne , † April 23, 2004 in Johannesburg ) was an English football and cricketer . In both sports he made it to the respective English national team and worked as a coach.

Athletic career

Sport was a big part of the young Willie Watson's life. Above all, father Billy Watson was a deserving Huddersfield Town football player and three-time English champion in 1924 , 1925 and 1926 , and when teenage Willie left school at the age of 14, he quickly realized that his future was less in sweeping the yard of strangers than in sports. The father, still active in the first team in Huddersfield Town, brought his offspring into his club as an amateur a year later, as did his older brother Albert before .

For the now 17-year-old Watson, a clear commitment to football did not mean promotion to professional player, because he had already shown himself to be talented in cricket when he was at school. In 1938 he celebrated his unfortunate debut with zero points (runs) for the Yorkshire II national team in Barnsley . In his second mission, against Lancashire , he even managed to do this in both rounds of the game (innings). To his own surprise, he got a third chance, which this time he made good use of 60 runs. His first-class career as a left-handed batsman , which comprised a total of 468 games, did not begin until the following year and ended in 1964 after he moved from Yorkshire to Leicestershire in 1958, where he was captain between 1958 and 1961. In 1954 he was named one of the five Wisden Cricketers of the Year .

In football, he first drew attention to himself in a few games in the 1938/39 season as a technically adept and somewhat slender left winger. However, the outbreak of the Second World War prevented further sporting developments, which resulted in a long interruption in official gaming operations. Watson was drafted into the army, where he occasionally gained further experience alongside celebrities such as Matt Busby , Tommy Lawton , Tom Finney , Frank Swift and Joe Mercer in the local soccer team. In the position of the left half-forward he also came to a use for England, although the game against Wales as "Victory International" did not have the character of an official international match.

After the war, Watson wanted to hold the inside striker position in the league operations that were soon to start again, but this was rejected in Huddersfield and instead mediated the former protégé in May 1946 on to Sunderland AFC . Two years later, Watson made his football breakthrough when Sunderland's then Scottish coach Bill Murray convinced him to move to the post of right winger . There he immediately impressed in a duel against left inner striker Stan Pearson from Manchester United that his future path was mapped out. On November 16, 1949, he made his debut against Ireland for the English national team and, two weeks after the 9-2 victory, he was followed by a 2-0 victory against the then two-time world champions Italy . He also traveled to the World Cup in 1950 in the English squad, but did not play in any of the three preliminary round games that meant the premature end for England. After two more international matches in November 1950, Watson's national football team career ended, but in the following year he became part of the English national cricket team , in which, despite 23 appearances, with an average of only 25.85 runs / wicket, he was unable to secure a regular place . He celebrated his greatest triumph in the second match of the Ashes series in 1953, when he secured the unexpected draw with 103 runs in the second innings for England .

By the end of 1953, Watson played a few soccer games in Sunderland, then became player-coach at Halifax Town , but his focus was now clearly on the sport of cricket. His last appearance was here for England's selection on March 14, 1959 against New Zealand . In the early 1960s he was also one of the English selectors who are jointly responsible for the line-up of the national team.

After the active career

After Watson had worked as a coach in both sports, he emigrated with his family to South Africa in 1968 , where he henceforth looked after the cricket club "Wanderers Club". He spent more than 3½ decades in his new adopted home and died at the age of 84 in Johannesburg .

literature

• Michael Joyce: Football League Players' Records. 1888 to 1939. (p.274) , 4Edge, Hockley, Essex 2004 ISBN 1-899468-67-6

Web links

• Obituary for Willie Watson in The Independent
• Obituary for Willie Watson in the Guardian
• Willie Watson as an English national soccer player
• Willie Watson as a cricketer